


Hold Me But Beware These Blood Covered Hands

by Did_you_see_the_light_in_my_heart



Category: Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Not Wonder Woman 1984 Compliant, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romance, Steve and Diana do what normal people do when there is no war (:, just a little though, no beta we die like Steve burning up in flames, nothing is perfect though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 18:54:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29705058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Did_you_see_the_light_in_my_heart/pseuds/Did_you_see_the_light_in_my_heart
Summary: There is love in the space between Diana's and Steve's looks. It's in everything they do, in everything they say, and every breath they take. But it's a lot different to say these things out loud.(Or: Diana talks about love and all Steve can hear are the leftovers of a war long gone.)
Relationships: Diana (Wonder Woman)/Steve Trevor
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Hold Me But Beware These Blood Covered Hands

**Author's Note:**

> Abril: Titanbreaker and I are at it again hehe. No regrets! This time we have a February teamed prompt, this is the one he chose for me.
> 
> Prompt  
> "I'm not worthy of anybody's love." "That's not true, you're worthy of mine." followed by the lover breaking eye-contact + a love confession.
> 
>   
> Also, I wrote this story before I saw WW 1984, so it's not compliant with the second movie.

His hair was getting long, too long for his taste, and too long for anyone who might've been alive when he was born. He'd get called certain _words_ if he still lived a few hundred years in the past, but he doesn't so there's no one to tell him anything but his own head -which to be honest, told him enough unpleasantries as it was.

Steve sighed, he was too tired to worry about things like grooming anyway, he was always tired these days. Diana said it was the shell shock and it was normal, it didn't help any to know it was normal though. _"People call it PTSD now, Steve."_ She would tell him sometimes.

The blond forced himself back into the present. Diana, lovely, wonderful Diana was looking at him with her soft brown eyes and the knot in his chest untightened a little, he gifted her then with a charming smile.

Diana lifted her hand to brush the hair away from his eyes and behind his ear, it really was too long, but she looked tenderly at him all through the motion. He could see she liked it like that, his hair, she spent way more time now playing with it than she had before when it had been at a respectable length.

"Enjoying the view?" He teased her softly, he knew she was.

She huffed a little breath in response and pushed his head away with her hand. They were sitting in the table of her small apartment, which was by the window with a lovely view of the city; coffee and pastries at the tip of their fingers from the little shop close by. It was nice, it's what he'd told her everyday people did when there was no war; it was beautiful.

"You Steven Trevor, are very enjoyable to look at. You are beautiful and charming and so very clever." She told him.

Steve laughed lightly and was about to throw a funny quip to close her statement but froze when her next words left her lips.

"I love you." Her eyes were brown and sweet and _earnest_.

Steve swallowed, his throat was very dry all of a sudden. The Amazon looked like she wanted to brush his hair behind his ear again, it had fallen onto his face in the little time that had passed. When she did reach out the blond grabbed her wrist to stop her in her track.

"Steve?" She asked puzzled once she gathered him fully with her eyes "What's wrong?"

Wrong? Nothing was wrong. Maybe everything was.

It wasn't like this came out of nowhere, Steve thought. Since he had come back to life into the 21st century they practically lived together. More than that they fluxed between acting like love struck teens and an old married couple around one another -which was honestly disgusting but _it just kept happening_. In his good days Steve cooked for her, when she had time Diana cuddled with him on the couch, they had slept together again _for goodness sake_.

They breathed the same air and navigated one another like known waters and they touched all the time; he himself had said those same words to her once upon a time. Still…

He couldn't swallow her statement. It turned his stomach, he was… he did not disserve that. He felt like his skin was crawling with a hundred thousand little ants.

"Steven?" She looked a little concerned now. He lowered her hand onto the table.

"I…" He began, but his thong was stuck to the roof of his mouth.

The morning light that had felt so soft and nice shined into his eye like a bothersome flare. He closed his lids and rubbed at his face. He couldn't do this.

Steve stood up, his chair scraped loudly against the floor. Diana looked at him with a fretting expression, he could not look at her, his eyes were stuck to the window and the city beyond and the light of the sun. His hands itched, his skin crawled.

Without a word, he took his jacket from the couch and left the apartment, ignoring Diana's worried questions as he went, he couldn't stay there anymore.

It was terribly childish of him, to be acting this way, but ever since there was no more war, more things like this had been happening. Things he would've been able to handle back then so easily were so hard now, and he didn't understand why. It was shell shock he knew, but that didn't make these things make anymore sense, it didn't make them simpler to handle. Steve didn't know what was wrong with him, why he'd bolted out of there like a coward, he was better than this, _he knew he was better than this_.

He walked fast and far, not really looking at where he was headed, just anxious to get away from the apartment they sha- _Diana's apartment_. It wasn't theirs, it was hers, that would imply so many things Steve didn't want to think about and things he was presently running away from.

He knew he was only managing that feat by the grace of his lover, who could've easily caught up with him and hold him down, he would've been unable to get away from her soft iron grip. She'd done that once, it had ended disastrously with Steve in a panic which had nearly driven Diana into one herself; she had never attempted to hold him still again.

Meaningless words passed him by as he tread the sidewalks to wherever his boots would take him. His hands shook and his heart felt jittery.

" _I love you."_

Steve exhaled a hard breath and tried to erase the words from his mind, but it was impossible. Diana's words were nails scratching on a board on loop inside his head. It should seem hypocritical of him, he'd said that same thing to her after all. But it was different, he was about to die, he was him and she was her and… _it was different_.

The edge of his eyes burned and he only refrained from punching himself because people would _see_ , and it wasn't healthy or whatever.

When Steve reached a small park he found a bench far away from the people there and sat down, immediately lowering his face into his hands and breathed. Steve sat and breathed in and out, in and out until the ringing in his ears dissipated a little, until the memory of his hand in the neck of a man while the other held the knife that slashed through his throat dimed, until the feeling of lies tumbling from his lips like a sweet sounding song blurred enough for him to feel a little like himself again.

His next breath stuttered in, he was fine, he was fine, _he was a fucking piece of trash-_

No! He had done his duty… he had done what he must…

The blond leaned back into the bark of the tree and looked at the perfectly beautiful sky; he sighed. The slamming of a foot against a ball snapped him to attention and he reached for a gun in his waist that wasn't there, he breathed out slowly and willed himself to relax by force. He rolled his back muscles and settled down as best as he could. Steve felt her eyes way before he saw her. _Diana_.

He turned to look at her, she was walking slowly towards him, she had on a badly matched pair of old pink tennis shoes with her fashionable dress and equally bad matched sweater on top she had probably thrown on in a hurry.

"Hey," she said softly, her demeanor calm but her eyes full of worry for him.

"Hey Angel," he whispered back.

She sat down next to him and was quiet as he waited for Steve to talk when he was ready. He would never be ready though, he would never feel like the burning of his mind and soul would ever let him be ready. But he'd never been ready for the war or any of the things it brought to him either.

"I'm sorry if I worried you." Steve started with the simplest of things after a while.

"I was worried, but you have my forgives," she told him easily, reaching out for his hand and giving it a gentle squeeze.

Steve smiled smally to his lap but said nothing more.

"Was it… what I said?" She ventured "I'm sorry if it was too soon, I had thought because-"

" _No_ , no Diana, it's not- You don't need to apologize, it's nothing you've done." The blond rushed to say, he ruffled his own hair as he looked for words he did not want to find.

"So… it was not my words then?" She raised her perfectly groomed eyebrow at him, knowingly. He huffed at her, but still kept quiet, he was unsure of how to voice the thought that ran wildly through his mind, he was pretty sure he _didn't want_ to voice it.

"It was your words but…" he looked down to his hands on his lap and felt the small trembling of his fingers. He fisted his hands and looked up with the intake of a deep breath. "Your love…" he tried to say but couldn't.

"You don't have to doubt it, Steve," she leaned closer, ready to reassure him but he shook his head.

"I do not doubt it. Diana I…" he swallowed, the vile of the words he intended to say burned his throat, his eyes locked in on hers. And she waited quietly for him to go on, she was always so kind like that. Kind and good and a shining sun all on her own.

The blood on his hands colored his mind accompanied but the sound of swiffing bullets flying through the sky. He rubbed his fingers together, there wasn't any blood there though he could _feel it_ , maybe it was under his nails…

"I'm not worthy of anybody's love." He said choking on his words, he looked away, unable to confront his shame reflected in her eyes.

"That's not true, you're worthy of mine." She said simply, like it wasn't hard, like it wasn't even a worthy thought to entertain.

He choked back a sob and covered his face with a hand, unwilling to let her see his weakness.

"I'm really not, you're just too good," Steve said into his palm.

The blond felt the Amazon snake her hands under his own until she was holding his face in them and tugged little by little until Steve finally let her drag his face into her line of vision. Her brown eyes were soft; her brown eyes were kind.

"It's not about what you deserve." She kissed his forehead "and I know it doesn't help much but for what it's worth… I _**do**_ think you are very worthy of love."

Because he could no longer bear to look at her understanding face he closed his eyes, her hands still holding onto his face. And _she did_ understand, she knew him, what he'd done in the war. They had talked about it long into the night, words shared into the darkness as they laid tangled together in the soft sheets of her bed. She had lived some of it herself back when they meet.

"I have… _so much blood_ in my hands." He struggled to say.

"I know," Diana said simply as she began to rub gentle circles upon his cheeks. She didn't condone him, she didn't forgive him, she just accepted him as he was.

He took a stuttering breath in and opened his eyes. She was still there.

Steve took her wrists into his hands and gently lowered them between them; he creased the callousness of her palms with loving devotion.

"I love you," he said, a lonely tear rolling down his face. "I love you very much."

She looked at him tenderly and raised her arms to his back, drawing him in to her for a tender yet firm hug. With fierce determination he hugged her back and whispered into her ear.

"Every day, I strive to be worthy of your love. I know you give it to me freely and this is not about whether I do deserve it or not, but I too think you are worth it. There's no one who's worth it more on this earth than you. I can only hope that one day, I can be a man we're both proud to know that loves you."

Diana buried her face into his shoulder, her soul filled by as much love as it was filled by sadness for this man that she held so close to her heart.

"Can you trust me?" She asked.

"I… yes, of course," Steve assured her swiftly, despite the question throwing him off.

"Can you trust me to not lie to you, trust me to be honest with my heart?"

" _Yes_ , of course, Diana, yes." He curried himself deeper into the embrace, hoping to comfort her just as much as she comforted him.

"Then trust me when I say that I know your flaws and I know who you are." Steve closed his eyes full of regrets, always so filled with the evil taint of the things he had done "And I am proud of you, you are a very kind person-"

"Diana-" Steve pull back a little but the Amazon still held on to his arms, softly enough that if he so choose he could get away, but so very present.

"Let me finish please," she asked and the blond relented, resisting the urge to look away from her fierce brown eyes. "You are so kind and so brave and you are a wonderful man."

Diana brushed her hands up and down his arms, the wind blew softly past them and through their hairs.

"I do not say this because I love you. Since the moment I meet you I could see…" she smiled and brushed her thumb over his cheek "you wanted to help so badly, you wanted the world to heal and tried so hard to make it happen." Diana placed the ever bothersome lock of hair that dangled on his face behind his ear, it made him smile.

"If wishes were horses…" he mumbled and shook his head "We can't make a world better only because we wish it Diana."

She nodded at that and cupped his jaw.

"No, we can't, but maybe it's enough."

Steve looked at her, at this wonderful woman he was so lucky to have met and felt the knot on his chest that had been suffocating him all morning uncoil. The sounds of war faded to a gentle background noise in his head and he breathed in the fresh air that smelled of sun and grass and earth and something that was so distinctly Diana.

"Yeah, maybe." He agreed.

The brunet smiled at him and saw his peace in the way the sharp edges of his body softened. She smiled at him full of tender love and leaned in to meet him for a kiss.

Steve met her halfway and held on to her just as lovingly as she did.

Maybe it _was_ enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Abril: This was going to end on a very genuinely sad note but I pushed through that thank the stars! I need my babies to be happy. 
> 
> I'd like to say that the hair thing makes Diana very happy because it reminds her of shows of affection with her past lovers in Themyscira who 98% of the time had long hair.


End file.
